Troops and security personnel often jump in harm's way without look ahead and early-warning capabilities. UAVs are usually not smart enough to undertake vital operations autonomously but instead require the assistance of a team of pilots and operators. In the field, important information is presented better through the experience and judgement of trained officers, personnel and soldiers regardless of the tactical and strategic situation on the ground. UAVs to date present information on the map and target localization to the infantry/soldiers on the ground, however no support mechanism exists for troops to provide situational awareness back to the UAVs to make them fly smarter and improve their co-operative control with humans.
On the battlefield, there is no time for UAVs to be monitored and programmed repeatedly and dedicatedly. Thus, there exists a need for a UAVs operator interface to be seamless and effective while not compromising any of the control/decisions made by humans on the ground. In effect, users and UAVs should co-exist and complement each other and not be dependent on each other for their correct operation..
Currently, UAVs work together in collaborative networks to detect ground obstacles/targets and track movement/disturbances as an early-warning/look-ahead for soldiers and personnel on the ground. However, most of the collaborative schemas for UAVs don't address the problem of incorporating humans as a valuable sensor. Humans on the ground can provide valuable battlefield assessment as well, including providing estimates on ground activity where occlusions exist for UAVs, as well as being better equipped to provide location and likelihood estimates when humans are in direct line-of-sight of the object of interest. Furthermore, human input also recieves ground reconnaissance information from scouts and ground intelligence, which is not provided to the UAV network in the sky in time to make better assessments/prediction of ground activity
Therefore, what is needed is a system and method that provides a collaborative scheme where multiple UAVs can be effectively controlled by ground personnel without jeopardizing their time commitments and on-field vigilance.